ABSTRACT
Saying that there is no master discourse allows us to see the space of discourse as constituted out of competing discourses, each of which may itself claim to be a master discourse. A postmodern interrogation of rivalrous discourses may proceed by granting each a temporary, relative integrity, so as to represent the whole space they occupy as an interaction between claimant master discourses, the interaction between them tending to reinforce or erode the identity of each. The relative integrity of each individual discourse may then be investigated in terms of its current conceptual structure, a network of compulsory meanings and allowable inferences between meanings. Discourses’ identities are transient, because these structures do not endure. Their reconstruction or collapse is driven by their interaction with rival discourses and by internally discovered structural incoherences, either of which may undermine stability of meaning, cause its dissemination, and necessitate the rebuilding of new meaning structures, shifting or creating discourses’ identities.
